Are you using skill-up food to speed up the process? There's also that earring from a treasure chest in...I think it was Gustav? I can understand if no earring, but try some Pitarus.
The main difficulty here is needing to use the job (without dark arts) to get skill ups, but nobody wants you to use stuff that's that gimp (and it's embarassing)- since you have to fight appropriate level monsters to get skill ups.

- no flexibility in moveing/dynamic partys (luopans that dont follow mob/players, indi-spells not castable on other pt members)
I'd be fine with the way things are now in this area, provided that MP costs and casting times are reduced.